The Great Philosophers | List of Philosophers

Welcome to the site for the great philosophers. Here you will find information on some of the greatest philosophers the world has ever known. The philosophers are listed alphabetically. Feel free to vote on your favorite and leave comments.

Machiavelli

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli is one of the greatest philosophers and writers of all time. He was Italian and was born on the 3rd of May in 1469 and passed away on the 21st of June in 1527. He is considered one of the most prominent and important founding figures of the modern day political science. His other areas of expertise were philosophy, political philosophy, playwriting, music and most importantly he served as a civil servant for the Florentine Republic. His most renowned work is the novel The Prince, where he describes how a ruling prince can maintain his throne and rule for as long as he wishes to. It also goes and describes how a government can be torn down to shreds in order for a new one to rise and be more successful.

Marx

Karl Marx was born in Germany in the year 1818. This was just after Napoleonic wars came to an end. At the age of just 6 years old his Jewish parents converted him the Lutheranism and it is still cloudy as to what effect this drastic change ma have had on his philosophical ideologies. Marx received the best of education from the most prestigious learning institutes in the nation. He was highly inspired by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the greatest philosopher of the previous generation. After the government suppressed the newspaper he worked at he moved to Paris in 1843 and following that to Brussels in 1845.

Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844 and died on August 25, 1900. He was a famous and successful German philosopher and classical philologist of the 19th century. He displayed his fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism by using a distinct rhetorical and evocative style of writing. This was evident in his writing of texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science. He is famous for questioning the value of objectivity and truth. Among his key ideas are death of God, will to power, perspectivism and many more.

Ockham

William of Ockham, born circa 1288, was an English scholastic philosopher and a Franciscan friar. Known to be one of most influential thinkers of the fourteenth century, he had a considerable say in the intellectual and political controversies of the time. He is best known for ‘Occam’s Razor’, a methodical principle that is named after him. Till the time of his death circa 1348, he had written several important works on theology, physics and logic.

Although William of Ockham studied at the University of Oxford from 1309 to 1321, he did not complete his education there. He joined the Franciscan order when he was quite young and his work after the period of his education became quite controversial, requiring him to be presented in court with charges of heresy. Ockham was excommunicated for leaving Avignon under fear of death, yet officially his works were never condemned.

Plato

The renowned classical Greek Philosopher was born in 428/427 BC and died in 348/347 BC. He was a great mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues and ultimately founder of the Academy of Athens. This academy was the first higher learning institution in the Western world. Plato helped lay the foundations of Western Philosophy and science. He did this with the help of his mentor Socrates and his student Aristotle. He is chiefly known by his work on Socratic dialogues for which thirty six dialogues and thirteen letters were honorably attributed to him.

Plotinus

Born in AD 205 and died in AD 270, Plotinus was a very famous Egyptian-Roman philosopher. He is also known as the greatest Greek Philosopher of late antiquity. He travelled to Alexandria at the age of 27 to study philosophy for a long 11 years. He was interested in learning about the philosophies of the Persians and the Indians. And in order to learn as much as possible, in AD 242 he joined Roman Emperor Gordian III’s expedition against Persia. He travelled to Antioch and Rome. At the age of 40 he settled in Rome and in a circle of intellects became the centre of attention. There he also started taking students under him and within a short amount of time the whole city was aware of his excellent work.

Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on the 28th of June in the year 1712. He died on the 2nd of July in 1778. He was a writer, composer and a major Genevois Philosopher of the 18th century Romanticism. Born in Geneva, Switzerland he had much influence on the French revolution through the influence of his political philosophy. He also aided in the development of the modern political, sociological and educational thought. His legacy has wide spread around the world and his ideas are truly revolutionary. His greatest work was his novel Emile: or, On Education. This book is a work of art based on the seminal treatise of education regarding all of people or citizenship all together.

Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell was a British philosopher, mathematician, socialist, historian, and social critic. Born on 18th May 1872, he died at the age of 94 on 2nd February 1970. Russell was educated at home by a series of tutors, and was greatly intrigued by the works of Euclid in his growing up years, which is said to have changed his life. He then won a scholarship at Trinity College and started studying there in 1890.

In 1903, he published his first important book, The Principle of Mathematics and in 1910 he became a lecturer in the University of Cambridge, where he received Wittgenstein as a student, who went on to become a noted philosopher himself.

Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the leading influential figures in 20th Century French Philosophy. Born on 21st June 1905, he died at the age of 74 on 15th April 1980. Sartre lost his father when he was 15 months old, and was raised by his mother and grandfather who instilled an early interest in classical literature.

He was attracted towards philosophy at an early age and did his doctorate in Philosophy from Paris at the École Normale Supérieure, where he also met Simone de Beauvoir, his lifelong romantic companion. He soon gained popularity as an existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic.

Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher well known for his pessimistic nature and philosophical clarity. Born on February 22nd, 1788, he believed that none of man’s desires could ever be fulfilled and tended towards a lifestyle that negated them all. Till the time of his death in September 21st, 1860, he propounded many theories on the topics of art, aesthetics, ethics, politics, women, sexuality and animal welfare.

Schopenhauer was born in the German city of Danzig and attended the University of Gottingen in 1809. He studied Kant and Plato under Schulze and one of his first works was titled The World as Will and Representation. He largely looked at what influenced individual motivation and believed that much of human action and will was futile.

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